


Waiting, Wanting

by BravoWriters



Category: Bravo Team (RvB OC)
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, Post-PFL, These morons had a BABY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 07:16:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15359148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BravoWriters/pseuds/BravoWriters
Summary: It's been five years since Phoebe was dishonorably discharged. What are the chances they'd both end up on the same nowhere planet? What are the chances they rekindle their brief but fervent love affair? Whose kid is this, even?





	Waiting, Wanting

Endymion was a nothing planet in the middle of nowhere; colonized, but with no notable landmarks or anything. It wasn’t even important enough to destroy in the war. It was desolate, it was lonely, it was dark. It was exactly where Alessio wanted to be.

Or, rather, it was that it didn’t matter enough to offend him, since the only place he wanted to be was away from absolutely everything. Well, really the only place he wanted to be was with– but she left. She left him, never asked him to come with her, and she had every right to want to stay away from it all but that didn’t mean he didn’t  _ miss _ her.

He tried not to say her name anymore, tried not to think it. It had been five years since she was discharged and she hadn’t even said goodbye, he’d had to pick up the story in bits and pieces from her team, which took ages. None of them really wanted to talk about it and that was fair. He didn’t think it was her fault, not with that  _ thing _ in her head, but that didn’t seem to matter to anyone else. Or they were grieving too much to think about the technicalities. West had been devastated.

So that made Endymion as good a place to settle as any. He wouldn’t run into anyone he knew here, he wouldn’t have any trouble finding work, he’d done enough maintenance on his ship that he could pick up a mechanic position without too much difficulty; doubtless he’d see unfamiliar vehicles in worse shape than the military had kept his, but he’d always been a fast learner.

Staying late wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t like he had anyone to go home to.

***

There was a mechanic on the northeast border of Elis, the settlement that closest passed as a city. She was short, she was loud, she ran her shop with an iron fist and had a laugh to match the wide, wide sky. Alessio took to her immediately. He had a type.

Her name was Melia and she only answered to Mel, and her hands were dirty and she had a wife she loved, a son she didn’t, and eleven grandchildren that were either a painful trial or the light of her world depending on the minute. When he asked if she was looking for help, she stared at him so intensely he dropped his eyes and almost apologized for bothering her. “You got experience?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Let me guess. Ex-military?”

That was a good guess. He’d been asked about a lot of professions–  _ you’re too pretty to work. Ever been a model? Ever been a whore? _ – but no one’s first thought when they looked at him was  _ military. _

“Yes ma’am. Pilot.”

“Pilot.” She grabbed his hands and examined them, noted the calluses and the short-trimmed nails. “Defected?”

“No– no.” When the Project was shut down the UNSC offered him either a reassignment or a peaceful retirement, if he could keep his mouth shut about everything that happened. He counted himself lucky not to get court martialed and retired. “My time was up.”

“Hm.” She dropped his hands and tilted his chin up instead so he was forced to look at her. “You running away from something, boy?”

“I… sorry?”

“People who come here, ex-military who come here, usually trying to leave something behind.”

“I…” He struggled with the words, and tried to figure out how to say that if he was going to be alone, it didn’t matter where he was, so he might as well be nowhere. She might take offense to that, though. “I guess I ran out of things to run to.”

“Hm,” she said again, looked into his eyes while he tried not to look away. Her eyes were blue and bracketed with lines made by decades of laughter, and they weren’t anything like  _ hers _ but felt familiar anyway. It wasn’t the age or the color so maybe it was just the light there.

“I could use you,” she said finally, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Dorie and I live upstairs, got a spare room from when we finally kicked Stephen out. You can stay with us, eat with us, in exchange for the work. Just don’t bother Dorie when she’s reading and if you bring someone home, keep it down.” He blushed, shook his head slightly to tell her that was unlikely. “We’ll be right as rain. You take the day, get settled, explore the town. You’ll start 0800 tomorrow.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You got a name?” He nodded. “What is it?”

“Les– Alessio.” The last person to call him Lessi had been– He’d rather go by his full name.

“Alessio. Alright. One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Do not call me ma’am.”

***

The last thing Alessio wanted to do was go upstairs and small-talk with a stranger so he shouldered his bag and started walking. For all that Elis was a small settlement, the thick woodland just outside city lines threatening to creep ever closer, its inhabitants had clearly tried to make the best of it. The streets were dusty and at least one lamppost on every street had a broken bulb and the amount of closed businesses suggested a town in decline, but the houses that  _ were _ inhabited were painted bright and had window boxes overflowing with any plant that would survive out here.

Some of the plants he even recognized as native to other planets far away, so either refugees and ex-military had brought flowers with them or there was a florist who was better equipped to send away for seeds. There was no reason to look for the florist, he had no one to buy flowers for and nowhere to plant anything he bought, but he had been in space a long time and the UNSC had dumped him in a quiet quadrant and it might be nice just to touch a leaf again.

He didn’t have to ask directions, thank God. Some wandering brought him to a little business with trellis roses climbing up to the roof and the sign in the window said OPEN so he went in. There was one woman behind the counter watching four children run around with a long-suffering but affectionate expression, and she straightened up when she saw him.

“Well, hey there, stranger!” she said with a bright smile. “New in town?”

“Very.”

“It’s always nice to see a friendly face around here! Name’s Ida.” She held out her hand and after a moment he shook it. She had what was probably the local accent, light and round and like the words sat at the front of her mouth; it sounded sweet.

“Alessio.”

“Ooh, ain’t that a handsome name. Suits your face.” He froze and she laughed. “Don’t mind me. You another UNSC drop-off? We get plenty around here. Her mama,” she pointed to a brown-haired girl of maybe four, “and his daddy,” a blonde toddler, “were both UNSC. We’re turning into a retirement community!” Another laugh. “It’s nice, though. Good to have kids around again. Mine are grown, so I babysit. Oh, my, I’m talking too much, aren’t I? Sorry, honey.”

“That’s,” he stuttered, “that’s okay. It’s, um, good to meet you.”

“Need work? Sure could use some help with the little ones sometimes. Four’s alright but when Daphne drops the triplets off,  _ oof. _ And Penny’s a good girl but she runs a little wild. Hector don’t help.”

It took Alessio a minute to even process all that, let alone try to match names to faces or form an intelligent response. “I, uh,” he said. “I have work.”

“Ah, better luck next time. Where you working?”

“At, um, the mechanic’s. Mel’s.”

Ida’s smile widened. “I’ll be seein’ more of you, then! You met Dorie? Dorie’s my aunt.”

“That’s nice… to live nearby.”

“Ain’t it just? I won’t hold you up any longer, honey. You want to leave or look around, go right ahead, and holler if you need anything.”

“I will,” he lied. Alessio had never asked a cashier for anything in all his life. If the choices were between bothering a store employee and spending an hour searching for something, he’d just take his time.

This was a nice place to take his time. The shop wasn’t big but the aisles were cramped, so he couldn’t see the door from most of the store. He let himself get lost in the seed packets, the brush of hanging ferns against his cheek like a lover’s finger, the smell of earth and the softness of petals and occasionally the tinkling of the little bell on the door. Ida chatted up a storm with anyone who came in and they all seemed to expect it, to like it.

Eventually he made himself leave, but not without promising Ida he’d be back.

***

He thought maybe it would be a while but every few days he found himself in the back corner of Ida’s shop, where she kept the exotics. Some of them he knew, most of them he didn’t, one or two of them he used to grow himself and they reminded him of the garden he used to keep planetside. That first Christmas he went down and brought flowers to–

It was peaceful. Or, rather, it wasn’t, it was cramped and messy and there were always children making noise with that high shrieking laughter, but all of that was a kind of peace. It had been a long time since he saw people just living their lives with no expiration date, without an axe hanging over their heads. And it wasn’t like he was on the front lines or anything but things went wrong all the time and his life wasn’t the only one he’d been worried about.

So three times a week for six months he went to Ida’s after work, so he could get the smell of grease out of his nose. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the work, didn’t appreciate the work, but… he liked green things more. Ida was friendly company. She didn’t ask him too much about himself, which he appreciated; he was a much better listener than he was a talker, and he wasn’t very interested in dragging up a lot of old memories. He told her he used to have a girlfriend, he used to have a garden, he used to have a ship. Someday, he admitted once, he’d like to add a  _ have _ to the list of  _ used to have _ .

One late summer afternoon was just the same, getting lost in the familiar rhythm of the door opening and closing, the ebb and flow of Ida’s conversations. Alessio wore no watch and so didn’t know how long it was until the door opened again and one of the little girls cried “Mama!” in a peeping voice. He was huddled in the back studying a blue rose and didn’t intend to come out until the woman left… until she started talking to Ida.

“Hope she didn’t give you too much trouble, Ida,” said the love of his life, and he froze.

“Not a bit! Took a nap after lunch. Didn’t you, honey?”

“Yep!”

“See? Nothing to worry about.”

“Thanks, Ida. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sure will! Bye bye, honey.” The door chimed again as they left and Alessio touched his chest. His heart was pounding, he felt painfully sick, he’d never had a head for statistics but the chances of ending up on the same settlement tucked away deep in the expanse of nowhere… He wasn’t sure he believed in God or anything like that but he was out of explanations. Maybe that was the way he was always fated to meet Phoebe: just when he needed her.

He stumbled out to the front of the store and looked outside but she was already gone. “Looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Ida with a smile. “Did I miss a cobweb in the back?”

“Was there a woman just here? Little, red hair? Her name is Phoebe?”

“Sure, Penny’s mama. You met her?”

He ran a hand through his hair and he  _ knew _ it would ruin it, but she used to mess with his hair like that and the memory of her touch was all of a sudden so raw he was breathless. “She’s one of my  _ used to haves _ .”

Ida nodded slowly. “Well?”

“Well?”

_ “Well, _ are you gonna let her stay  _ used to? _ You think she misses you?”

He doubted it. She was kicked out and that wasn’t her fault but he didn’t go with her, he should have gone with her. She probably didn’t want him to go with her, she didn’t look for him after her court martial, but he should have gone anyway. He abandoned her when she was at her lowest; if she was doing better now, he should leave her to it. It was selfish to want to barge back in on her life. She had a daughter, she probably had a husband to match…

“She shouldn’t,” he said. “I want her to be happy.”

“I’m sure,” said Ida. “But you’d rather her be happy with you.”

Well,  _ yeah. _ “I…”

“Don’t need to say it. Go home, take a shower, change your clothes, think it over. You still want to see her, come back here, I’ll give you her address.”

He wanted to thank her, he wanted to bolt outside and scream, but instead he took a deep breath and went home. He snuck past Dorie– Ida’s talkativeness was genetic, and he didn’t want to waste any more time–  and showered quick as he could, combed his hair and put on a clean pair of jeans and a shirt that fit.

Probably he should take a seat and think this through, at least think of something to  _ say, _ but… five years. Would her husband be home? Would her daughter be there? He was good with kids, he’d always been good with kids, Ida’s group tended to keep to themselves but Penny was sweet. She never said much but she wasn’t afraid of anything, not quite Phoebe’s loudmouth firecracker personality but definitely close enough to be related. She reminded him of his little sister when she was a baby.

Without thinking about much at all he jogged back to Ida’s, as fast as he dared without getting sweaty. She was just locking up but she grinned when she saw him. “Knew you’d be back.”

“Please,” he said, slightly breathless. “Please.”

“14 Pearl Street. Ground floor apartment, unit 6. There’s a sign in the window that says ‘BEWARE OF DOG’ but she doesn’t have a dog.”

Pearl Street. He knew where Pearl Street was, even if he didn’t spend much time there. It was one of the middle-class residentials, just a few blocks down from Ida’s. “I should…”

“Go? I sure hope so. If she breaks your heart, Auntie’s good at cleaning up those kinds of messes.”

Dorie was sweet but Alessio had never been one to talk about his problems, really. Only to– only to Phoebe. If she broke his heart all the sweetness in the world wasn’t gonna put it back together. “Thanks,” he said, and left.

***

14 Pearl Street was a three-decker with faded paint and a roof with few shingles missing, but the lawn was mowed and the sidewalk was neatly swept and there was indeed a sign in the ground-floor window to the right of the front door. If he let himself stop and think, he was gonna freeze, get too scared to speak, run home. She deserved better than that. Maybe he deserved better than that too.

He knocked twice on her door and dropped his fist, clenched and unclenched it repeatedly. He was sweating. Oh, God, she was gonna open the door and see him sweating–

He heard the gentle tapping of socked feet and the hinges creaked a little when the door opened and then–

She was beautiful. She’d always been beautiful but he’d almost forgotten, he didn’t have any pictures so all his memories were worn thin, more like the memory of how it felt to have memories of her. Her hair was braided back just like it used to be and her eyes were just as wide as ever but her face was a little thinner, her cheeks a little more hollow; she didn’t have the round-faced sweetness of the twenty-two year old who got drunk and admitted she’d never been kissed. When she went pale, all her freckles stood out in sharp relief.

“Lessi,” she said softly.

He opened his mouth to say something, her name maybe, but nothing came out.

“Lessi, you’re…” Alive? Here? A huge pain in the ass? “I didn’t expect to see you.” Clearly. “You can… you can come in.” She opened the door a little wider, enough for him to step in, and she reached past him to close the door once he was inside but her  _ arm _ –

Phoebe had strong arms, always had, broad shoulders and toned biceps under skin that was always warm even in the miserable vacuum of space. Her hands were small and callused and they fit so neatly in his but now… Her right arm was the same as ever, maybe a few more scars and bruises on her forearm, but her left arm was– well, it wasn’t. Prostheses could be advanced, nearly indistinguishable from human flesh, but this was just a jointed metal skeleton. It bent in all the right places, including her fingers, and she could move it naturally enough, but there was no escaping…

“Your arm,” he said faintly. Her face twitched but she didn’t show more emotion than that.

“I got on the wrong side of some explosives when I was still in an active war zone. My arm was hanging by a couple ligaments. This is absolutely an improvement. Do you… want a cup of coffee? Or a glass of wine?”

“Whiskey?”

“Yeah,” she said, almost smiling. “That’s what I thought too. Sit down.”

It didn’t occur to him to disobey and he sat at her kitchen table. She pulled two mugs from her cabinet, grabbed the whiskey, and set it all in front of her when she sat across from him. “Sorry for the mugs. They withstand a four year old a lot better than a glass does.”

He had so much to ask her, about Penny, about her arm, about her  _ life, _ but his tongue was heavy in his mouth and downing the drink she passed him did not help. “What happened?” she asked quietly, staring down at her drink. “With the Project. With you.”

“I, I…” He cleared his throat. “I… retired. Recently. Things went… south.”

Her eyes slipped closed. “My team.”

“I don’t– I don’t know…” No one ever told him anything. He wasn’t a Freelancer; he didn’t have clearance to look into personnel files. “I’m sorry, I should have–”

“No, no, you couldn’t… Forget it. That part of my life is– is over.”

That he was that part of her life worried him a little– everything worried him– but he couldn’t focus on that. He shouldn’t focus on himself, not when she was here in front of him again. “Where’s your… husband?”

She choked on her whiskey and her eyes snapped open. “Who told you I have a husband? How’d you get my address, anyway?”

“Address from Ida, and… no one, I guess I just thought…”

“Ida. Figures.” She sighed, set her mug down, pushed a few loose curls back from her face. “No husband, no boyfriend, no nothing. I’m just the whore who got knocked up out of wedlock.”

“Wh– that’s not–”

“Not fair? It’s what everyone thinks. No point pretending otherwise. I don’t… care, anymore.” He was bad at reading faces but she made no attempt to pretend that wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t a crime to love, it wasn’t a sin to slip between the sheets, God only knew on the ship he’d been more than enthusiastic… People had no right to look at her funny. He told himself he didn’t care who she’d been with after him. It was not convincing.

“Tell me what you’re doing, Lessi.”

“I’m… I’m drinking with you.”

“Not what I mean.” She caught his gaze and held it. Phoebe had eyes so light brown they were bronze, and when they caught the light they were molten gold. She was pretty all over, from the constellations of freckles on her shoulders to the delicate bones of her ankles, but her eyes were  _ arresting  _ and he should have expected that, even after five years, she still had that power over him. “Why Endymion?”

“I just… got dropped off here. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“And you… live here?”

“Six months,” he said. “I live, um, at the mechanic’s. I work with Mel?”

“Mel,” she repeated. “Married to Ida’s aunt Dorie, right?”

“Right.”

“I bet you’re a good mechanic.” Oh, he could not handle her complimenting him without another drink, so he poured one for each of them. “You always were good with your hands.” He choked. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

He coughed. “I’m not… Just surprised. Where, uh, do you… work?”

She jerked her head to the left, the direction of the city center. “What passes for a hospital around here. Got experience patching myself up for anything less than lethal, not afraid of blood... “

“You’re a medic?”

“More like a medic’s assistant. Kind of a nurse. Got a family to support.”

He wished he had something to say to her. Or, rather, he had too much to say and not enough time to say it, or not enough strength of will, or not enough  _ words. _ She liked poetry, or at least she used to, but he was not a poet and he had no idea how to be honest in a way that would make sense aloud.

Maybe she knew that, because she didn’t look very disappointed that he was quiet. If she was disappointed at all it was probably because she’d clearly changed in five years and he… hadn’t. Or he didn’t think he had. He probably wouldn’t notice if he did.

“This was a nice surprise,” she said, “but I– I have work in the morning. Penny wakes up early…”

“Oh!” He jumped to his feet, a little more unsteady than he might hope; probably should have paced himself a little better. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think…”

“It’s okay. We can… I’ll see you again soon, okay? It won’t be five years again.” She tried for a smile but it didn’t reach her eyes, and she got up to show him the door. “We can get coffee or something.”

“Anything,” he said too quickly. When he was at the door he hesitated to leave and she hesitated to kick him out.

“You look good,” she said softly. “You look good, Lessi. I’m glad you made it out.”

“I hope you’re happy,” he said, and he knew the phrase could be sharp as shattered glass but he meant it as honestly as he’d ever meant anything. She clearly had a good life here, a good job, her little girl, a pretty apartment and some friends. He hated to break into that but he didn’t think he could last another five years.

He was on her stoop and she had her hand on the door and it would be so easy to just shut it in his face but she didn’t and absurdly he thought about kissing her. He wouldn’t initiate it, would never kiss her without permission, but in the old days he used to wait for her to make the first move and she never disappointed, and he wanted her to tug him down by his shirt to kiss him. At the very least he wanted her to want to do it.

“Did you think about me?” he said, because he had to know and because that was too much whiskey. “While we were… apart. Did you think about me?”

For a moment she said nothing at all but then she smiled, and it was tired and sad and small but genuine. “Every day,” she said. “Every day.” And she closed the door.

***

It was only a week before he heard from her again. He was at work, tucked under a Jeep that had been giving him two days of trouble, when heard the tell-tale thump of Mel’s boots. She walked like she was trying to shatter the earth and he liked it about her; he was so uninterested in being a figure of notice, he admired someone who demanded attention.

“You got company,” she said, nudging his shin with her toe.

“If it’s Merle, I’m really trying as hard as I can on this–”

“It’s not Merle, unless he got forty years younger and eighteen times as pretty.”

That gave him pause. He rarely dealt directly with customers, only if they specifically wanted to talk to him, and those were either complainers like Merle or older ladies like Dorie’s friends. The only pretty girl he knew was–

“Can I…”

“Take a break? She doesn’t look like she’s got all day. You have ten minutes.”

Phoebe was waiting by the front desk with a paper bag in her hand. She was dressed for work in pale blue scrubs but her hair was loose around her shoulders. He immediately tried to rub the dirt from his cheek but all he did was make it worse. “Wow,” she said with half a smile.

“Wow what?”

“Didn’t think there would ever come a day where I looked more put together than you.”

He smiled back. Put together wasn’t anything he expected from her. The first time he met her, she was fixing his lock from when she’d changed the code just because she could; he liked her messy and bright and wild. That was why he liked her hair down, too. “Nice to see you.”

“I’m on my lunch break, thought I’d stop by for a bit.” She held up the bag. “I brought pastries.”

“Here, we can… outside?” Oh, that wasn’t even a sentence, but she nodded anyway like he made sense to her and followed him out back. There was a truck out there with no engine, Mel’s first car, she refused to trash it so it just took up space. Alessio hopped up to sit on the tailgate and held out his hand to help Phoebe up. She didn’t take it, though. She’d never needed his help but that didn’t stop him from offering it. Her legs swung in a slow rhythm and she reached into the bag, pulled out a pastry, held it out to him, and he took it. “Raspberry?”

“Do you… not like raspberry? You used to…” Her brows were quirked up like she was genuinely worried he wouldn’t like it.

“No, it’s– it’s still my favorite.” His favorite had been apple before he brought her that jam and saw her eyes light up, at least before she accidentally threw it at him. Their early relationship, even when it was platonic, had been a cavalcade of misunderstandings and confusion. Hence the throwing of the jam. It had been a mess but he wouldn’t trade those memories for the world. He took a bite, sighed happily. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” She ate half of hers in one bite; Phoebe had always been all-or-nothing about things. “How do you like Elis so far?”

Her legs were still swinging. There wasn’t anything about her of the exhausted grief she expressed last week, concerned about her team, but she always tried to hide her pain as much as she could. She’d always been so concerned about Lambda ‘ruining’ her so she had to be damn tough to survive discharge, brain surgery, the Director, losing her arm and having a baby.

“It’s nice here. Everyone’s friendly. I like feeling useful, and it’s nice to know I’m always gonna be making it home in the same condition I left in.”

“That’s important.”

“Do you… like it here?”  _ Are you happy? Are you happy without me? Because I was gone, or in spite of it? _

She flicked her eyes at him in that sideways way that left him breathless, like she knew what he meant by that question. “I do. I miss… shenanigans. I miss that sense of family. But here, when I see something that’s broken, I can fix it. When I see someone who’s hurting, I can help them. And when I hear ugly insults, they’re not coming from my own head. Here… I’m not treating anyone who broke all their own ribs, or who crossed dimensions. I’m making a baby smile after a flu shot. Or, y’know, trying to keep a poker face when I pull an MP3 player out of some guy’s ass.”

He choked on his pastry, but he couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t envy you there. Please tell me that’s just a random example.”

“Oh, no, that’s very much something I did this morning. Why would me making that up be better? Then I’m some freak who thinks too much about asses.”

He was not going to comment on that last part but he felt himself relax. It was just like it used to be, her knowing exactly when to be foul-mouthed past the point of decency and him laughing along because he couldn’t help himself. “It’s hard to imagine you as a medic.”

“Why? Am I so miserable a presence?”

“No! No, of course not, you just…” She was a great person to have at a bedside when it came down to it. Phoebe called herself selfish but when someone else’s happiness was at stake she buried her fear and anger and sadness six feet under; she knew how to listen and how to make jokes, even if she missed the mark sometimes on when to do one or the other. More than once he’d stopped by the med bay and seen her curled up in a chair at West’s side, or Nev’s, or Oregon’s, fast asleep in a cramped position. “You just… always hated the med bay.”

She shrugged but he caught the downward twitch of her mouth. “I don’t… go there myself. Not ever. Penny was born in my bathtub and anything else I patch up myself. I can visit patients there, I can take her there, but I still don’t… maybe that’ll change someday. You never know.”

He had to give that to her, she knew just how to make him worry. “Bathtub?”

“It’s perfectly safe if you’re being careful. Gentler. I didn’t need stitches, even.”

“Why– why would you need…?”

She almost laughed, brushed the crumbs off her hands and jumped off the tailgate. “Don’t ask, Lessi. Hey, I think your ten minutes are up and I should get back to work. You can come by for dinner sometime if you want. Bring your girlfriend.”

He reeled back a little. “My what?”

“Hasn’t Dorie set you up with anyone yet? Ida tried to set me up with one of her sons but he got nervous and drank too much before I got there and he threw up on my shoes. I don’t think you’d have that problem.”

It would be too pathetic, right? To tell her he hadn’t even wanted to think about anyone else since she left? “No, she hasn’t.”

“Then she must think you’re gay or a total lost cause. Well, when you find a girlfriend, she can come over for dinner. See you around, Lessi.” She waved and picked her way through the weeds around the building so she could walk back to work.

That had to be a rejection. Her being insistent on him finding a girlfriend had to be her way of telling him it wouldn’t ever be her, and he told himself he’d be okay with that… But he knew it was a lie even as he thought it.

He shoved the paper bag in his pocket and went back inside, happened to catch a glimpse of the clock. “That was almost twenty minutes,” he said to Mel. “You could’ve called me back in.”

She stared him down. “You want me to call you back now?”

“No, I– I’m already here. I was just curious.”

“Back to work.” She jerked her head at Merle’s Jeep and he sighed, picked up his wrench, knelt down beside the car again. He was about to get back under it when Mel interrupted. “Hey!”

He craned around to look at her. “Yes?”

“You know why I gave you more time,” she said, and walked away.

***

Phoebe came by for lunch more often after that, every couple days and then every day. On days where he worked and she didn’t, she’d bring Penny and they’d smile while she tried coaxing the junkyard cats out from under the shop.

“One day they’re just gonna bite her,” said Phoebe with a sigh. Penny was bent over in some weird position, her hair trailing in the dirt and a piece of bread in her hand, making kissy noises.

“I hope not.” Maybe he should try catching the strays, get them vaccinated. He didn’t know where to start, though, other than the assumption they would not be tempted by bread.

“Gotta learn someday, I guess.”

Alessio looked at her sideways. “You want her to get bitten?”

“No, of course not. But I can tell her a hundred times to leave those cats alone and it won’t sink in until it hurts. Sometimes you gotta learn by doing. You learn how to play guitar by playing, you learn how to love by loving, and you learn how to leave animals alone by getting bitten. Penelope, the kitties don’t want your bread. Please let them sleep.”

“It’s the morning!” she said, but came back over to the truck. Without thinking Alessio scooped her up so she could sit between them.

“And kitties sleep during the day, remember?”

“Okay. Good night.” She waved at the hole under the shop where the cats hung out, but it was with the hand still holding bread and Alessio couldn’t hide a smile. She looked up at him with dark, dark eyes. “Do kitties dream?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

“What do they dream about?”

“Probably mice.”

“Maybe they dream about me.” She took a bite of her bread.

“Maybe,” he said, and smiled again. Penny was almost five and her worldview was… interesting, to say the least. He’d forgotten that strange and wonderful way children saw things. It had been a while since he’d thought more than passingly about starting a family, but having children around all the time might be nice. If he was really lucky, if he started seeing Phoebe again, he could adopt Penny. If she never warmed back up to him, though, at least he had this.

Whatever happened between them in the future, whatever there was between them now, nobody could take away what he’d had before. Even if Phoebe and Penny moved tomorrow and he never saw them again, nobody could take away the memory of this moment, of Phoebe coaxing Penny’s hair back into a neat braid while Penny practiced meowing.

And further back, too. No one could take back her first  _ I love you _ to him, blurted out by mistake under mistletoe. No one could take back all those lazy mornings when they both had better things to do than each other but didn’t let that stop them. No one could take away the steady, ceaseless adoration he’d had for her since their first awkward conversation.

When he was on his deathbed in fifty years, would he still remember the way her hand fit into his?

***

“You’re sick,” said Dorie over dinner that night.

Alessio narrowly avoided choking on a piece of pepper and started worrying. Did he look sick? He didn’t feel feverish or congested. Did he have anything he could have passed on to Phoebe or Penny? “Sick?”

“Lovesick,” she said, and he sighed. At least that wasn’t contagious. “My niece tells me you blush every time she mentions your girl.”

He was certainly blushing now. “She isn’t…”

“Idiot,” said Mel. “Tell her.”

He spent half of every night missing her. Did she do the same for Penny’s father? “Do you know who she was… with?”

“Don’t care,” said Mel.

“Don’t know,” said Dorie. “Penny was a couple months old when she got here. Women with children still fall in love, honey.”

Of course they did. But why would it be with him?

“Just tell her. What’s the worst that could happen?”

She could say no; she could laugh at him; she could be angry he took her kindness for romantic intent; she could say yes out of pity; she could tell him to his face that she might have loved him once but that was a very long time ago. “She could leave again,” he said, and Dorie gave him a look full of sympathy.

“Tell you what,” she said. “The twins turn six next week.” He appreciated her just saying ‘the twins’ instead of what Mel did, which was say a bunch of names and assume he knew who she meant. “Penny knows them, Ida watches them all the time. Have her come over for a little party and you can talk to her mama.”

Now he  _ was _ starting to feel sick, but thank God anxiety wasn’t contagious either. “Won’t Penny want Phoebe to stay with her?”

Mel barked out a laugh. “That kid doesn’t need a damn thing. Independent as hell, tough as a wildcat when she wants to be. Don’t get me wrong, loves her mama, but doesn’t spend any time missing her.”

That reminded him of his sister, too. She was the clingiest baby, didn’t learn to walk until she was almost two because everyone carried her everywhere, but the day she turned five she decided she was queen of the castle and would rule her household with an iron fist. Alessio had ten years on her but allowed himself to be bossed around anyway. “Okay,” he said finally.

“Good, because I already cleared it with her two days ago.”

He really should have expected that. “What if I’d said no?”

“You wouldn’t have said no. And Mel and I were fully prepared to browbeat you into agreeing anyway. I’m playing matchmaker. She just likes to browbeat.”

“She knows me,” said Mel, picking up her empty plate and Dorie’s and taking them to the sink. “You’re good-looking, probably. Won’t get her in any trouble. Least incompetent person working for me right now.”

“Stop, stop, you’re overwhelming him,” said Dorie with a laugh. “Have fun with her, honey. She makes you smile, and it’s good to see you smile.”

***

Mel wouldn’t let him off work early, but she also didn’t keep him late, which was nearly the same thing. He took probably too long to shower and dress and do his hair but resisted the temptation to linger in front of the mirror; she’d only make fun of him for being vain and anyway he could hear the kids screaming downstairs.

He snuck past the crowd and jogged to Phoebe’s. It was a nice afternoon, cloudy and breezy, which was a nice change of pace from the last week’s scorching heat and blinding sun. He enjoyed the weather so much he barely remembered to be nervous. It was stupid to be nervous around her, he’d known her for years, he knew her middle name and she’d seen him naked and for a while she was the only person who made him forget to be anxious.

But he  _ was _ nervous. He was nervous because when they met she was convinced he was too good for her, and that was always ridiculous but now she  _ knew _ it was ridiculous and she didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody and that was  _ good, _ great even, but he liked… to be needed. He loved to be needed the way Phoebe needed to be loved. It overwhelmed him when he was on her doorstep and he almost turned around and went home right there…

But she opened the door and lounged against the frame, one hand around a bottle of wine and the other lazily on her hip. “Truth or dare,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. After a moment he matched it.

“You know I’m no good at this.”

“Because you’re too good to have any secrets and you’re  _ way _ too good to do anything daring or stupid.”

He arched his brows but she was right. “You do it. Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” she said immediately.

“Hand over the wine.”

She laughed but did it, moved out of the doorway so he could come in. He sat on the couch immediately and when the door was closed she joined him, reclining against the arm and resting her feet in his lap like she used to do. “Thanks for coming over,” she said. “It’s so quiet without her here.”

“She’s pretty quiet, isn’t she?”

_ “Quiet? _ Penelope?” She laughed again. “She doesn’t stop talking! It’s nice, though. I’m sick of the quiet.”

No wonder she didn’t miss him, he was nothing  _ but _ quiet. There must have been something in his expression because she nudged his thigh with her toes. “I don’t mean  _ you,” _ she said. “I’m loud enough for the both of us.” She said it like it was a bad thing and he couldn’t think of how to say that he didn’t consider it an insult, he liked her just as she was, so instead he said nothing and after a pause she continued. “I feel like every time I see you I just talk about myself. What about you? What are you like now?”

“What am I… like?”

“Sure. Who do you date, what do you do, how do you feel? Do you take your coffee the same way? Are you still ridiculously self-conscious about how your hair looks in the morning even though Jesus Christ dude it’s the early morning and everyone looks like shit?”

He couldn’t quite keep the blow to his ego in check. “I’m the same as always.”

“Tell me,” she said. “I won’t make you give me a play-by-play, I just wanna know someone was taking good care of you. The last girl you slept with, did she think you looked cute all rumpled in the morning?”

He did not know how to say there was no one but her. Well, he could just  _ say _ it, could just tell her outright, but… she had a life after him. She was with other people, she got pregnant, she went out with Ida’s son… He didn’t even try. He didn’t even want to try, and he could only barely bring himself to want to want to try. It didn’t matter that he was her first and he didn’t care that he wasn’t her only; the only thing that mattered was who would have her last.

“Yes,” he said, instead of any of that. “The last girl I was with… liked me like that.”

There was an expression on her face he couldn’t name but it disappeared when she reached for the wine. Instead he put it on the floor at his feet so neither of them could drink it. “Good,” she said. “I’m glad. You should be worshipped.”

He felt his cheeks get hot. “What about… you? Do you keep in touch with Penny’s father?”

Her expression bordered on  _ I don’t want to talk about it _ but she didn’t tell him off. She never seriously told him off. “A little,” she said. “But it’s never gonna go anywhere. He’s not interested in anything else to do with me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. Her being happy with him was wildly less important than her being happy in general. “What makes you think he doesn’t care about you?”

“Penny’s almost five, it’s just… been a while since we were, y’know… really together. It was just a really messy situation overall. I’m sure he doesn’t miss me like that. But it’s fine, I don’t… care.”

He wouldn’t call her on it but that was so obviously a lie. Back when she went by M she went cold around people she didn’t know, or people she wanted to respect her, like her height stunted her ambition or like love was a weakness. And she wasn’t ambitious and she wasn’t weak, obviously, but she played at not caring, and it  _ was _ playing. If she was as cold as she pretended they wouldn’t get along but she had more compassion than common sense. The only true thing in that whole act was that she rarely cried and hated crying in front of people… but he’d seen that from her too.

“It’s okay to miss him,” he said. “Even if he doesn’t miss you back.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m starting to get that. So your last girl,” she nudged his leg again and he wished she wouldn’t, it was too hard to have her touch him, “tell me about her. She a supermodel like you?”

“I’m not–”

“You’re objectively beautiful, this is not flirting.”

“No,” he said. “Not a model.” Phoebe talked about herself like no one had ever called her pretty before she met him, and he hated thinking that was true but it very well might have been. Objectivity didn’t come into it, couldn’t come into it, he had no idea how to be  _ objective _ about someone he loved, but he knew she wasn’t a ‘classical’ sort of beauty. Her nose had been broken more than once, and her mouth and nose both were broad in such a round face.

When she smiled, though, none of that mattered. He’d been with  _ classically beautiful _ before and much preferred Phoebe’s crooked grin, the expressive quirk of her eyebrows, the thousands of freckles he could trace by heart.

“Well,” she said, “you could have anyone in the universe. I talked to Ida, she talked to Dorie. They get you a date yet?”

He swallowed, and he was acutely, painfully aware of the heat of her legs against his. “No…”

“They’re slacking.”

“Sorry,” he said, without really knowing why. Sorry he didn’t have the answer she wanted? Sorry for making her play matchmaker? Sorry that the two of them were here wanting someone who didn’t want them back?

Anyone else would have asked why he was sorry or outright said he had nothing to be sorry for, but Phoebe knew him, knew he apologized easy as breathing, so she tapped her foot against his thigh in a rough approximation of a comforting pat and said “it’s okay.”

For a long while they didn’t say anything. Before, their silences were natural, not the absence of conversation but the presence of peace. He felt the overwhelming urge to get that feeling back but worrying like that probably only made everything  _ more _ awkward.

“I know it’s been a couple months,” she said finally, “but I still kinda… can’t believe you’re here.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Can I say something, Lessi?”

He nodded, and she scooted closer to him like she was gonna reach for the wine. She didn’t, though. She tucked her legs under her and sat so close he could kiss her effortlessly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he was so surprised he couldn’t say anything. “I’m sorry I fucked up so bad and got myself kicked out.”

“That wasn’t you–”

“And I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye, I just… I knew it was all over but I didn’t want to hear you say it. I didn’t want you to look at me like I was a monster. I didn’t want to see Mitch disown me, I didn’t want to say goodbye to West like that. I know it was a long time ago and I’m sure you don’t ever think about it anymore but I just– I had to say it.”

She smiled faintly and reached up with her good arm to trace the line of his cheek. “We never got to get tired of each other,” she said softly. “You never got to get sick of me, I never got to get bored of you. We never got to let it go.”

“I didn’t want to let it go,” he said. “I didn’t want to get sick of you.”

“But you would have.”

“No, I wouldn’t have.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can.” He took her hand from his face and just held it and for a moment he saw that old look in her eyes, that fight-or-flight exhilaration like she was at the edge of a cliff and didn’t know if she would fall or fly. The look always preceded her worst decisions… but her best ones, too. He kept on looking at her and in the end she looked away first.

“It doesn’t matter now, I guess,” she said. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Yeah,” he said, his heart sinking into his stomach. “I guess I know.”

***

After a while he gave her the wine back, and they passed it back and forth like that bottle of vodka the night they first kissed. She gave no sign of wanting to take things that direction tonight so he tried to put it out of his mind, tried to lose himself in her laughter. It worked, even. Half her affection was better than none of it and he was too tongue-tied to tease he as much as she teased him but he tried, and she smiled every time he did.

They didn’t get  _ drunk, _ not with Penny coming home, but a little tipsy wasn’t out of the question. It was nice to loosen up for the first time in a long while. They played blackjack and Alessio won, because he  _ always _ won, because Phoebe refused to stand unless she got an even twenty-one which meant she went bust nearly every hand. “I’m all or nothing,” she said, begrudgingly handing over another quarter.

“You sure are,” he said, taking it.

She kept rolling her shoulder like it was stiff so finally he asked. “Can’t you take that thing off? It won’t bother me if it would be more comfortable.”

“Unfortunately not,” she said, rubbing the spot where metal met skin. “The price I pay for fluid movement. Something experimental with nerve conductivity, I don’t know, they wired it through my AI port… I’m not an engineer. But the point is it’s as permanently attached as my real arm. Learn to love looking at it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“I’m just glad it happened while I was still pregnant. Penny never knew me with two arms, so it doesn’t… scare her. And I think she tells the other kids not to be worried either. Although Hector’s dad has a glass eye and I think that’s  _ way _ freakier than my skeleton arm. But I guess I’m not four years old anymore, and I won’t ever be again.” She cracked a grin, reached for the wine, threw two quarters into the pot. “That’s actually my earliest childhood memory. See, when I was a kid, I think I thought time was cyclical? Which I guess it might be. But I couldn’t count higher than a hundred so I thought after you turned one hundred years old, you just kind of started counting from scratch again.”

“That’s adorable,” he said, smiling.

“I was very distressed when I found out otherwise. I remember very distinctly asking my dad ‘I’m never gonna be four again?’ in just the most heartbroken way.”

“More adorable.”

“Thank God Penny is smarter than I was. She really won the genetic lottery. She’s got her dad’s looks, his brains, and his temper. All she got from me was a bad sense of humor and a spine.” She tapped the deck of cards. “Stand or hit?”

He had a Queen and an Ace but he couldn’t focus on them and took the hit, went bust. Phoebe didn’t appreciate the value of her toughness, to think it was less important than  _ looks. _ If a little girl needed a role model, she could do a lot worse than Phoebe.

After he had all her quarters, he could no longer think of a reason to not go home, and she looked tired. “I should go,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’d say I need to pick up Penny but my guess is she fell asleep at Dorie’s and isn’t gonna want me to wake her up.”

“I could watch her,” he said without thinking. “Just– tonight, I mean. If you want to get some sleep.” Might be nice, even, to have someone to make pancakes for in the morning.

“Would you…” She pushed her hair back from her eyes and her brows knitted together. “You’re sure? It wouldn’t be too annoying?”

“She’s a sweet kid. And I used to take care of–”

“Your little sister,” she finished.

He blushed. “Did I talk about her that much?”

“No, almost never. But,” she said with a slight smile, “you forget how well I know you.”

She clambered to her feet to show him to the door and started to reach for him for a hug goodbye, out of habit, but hesitated like she didn’t have a right to that anymore. He reached back, of course. The metal arm was different but otherwise her hugs were just the same. “Still fits,” he mumbled into her hair, and she clutched him a little tighter for that.

***

He didn’t quite  _ stumble _ home but it was definitely in that vein, and he was perfectly ready to take it slow up the stairs so he didn’t wake anybody… but Dorie was doing a crossword at the kitchen table anyway. She didn’t glance up when he came in but smiled. “Did you have fun, honey?” she asked, and she didn’t really imply anything but he flushed anyway.

“Yes.”

“What did you get up to?”

“We… had a few drinks, played cards. Talked a little.”

“Talked,” she repeated. “Did you confess your love or not?”

“I don’t…”

“Kissed her goodnight?”

“We– she hugged–”

Dorie sighed. “Mel is only going to get worse about this, I hope you know. I don’t mean to meddle, honey, I only… no, I supposed meddling is the best word for it. We want to see you happy. Speaking of…”

“Speaking of?” There was no way that was a good thing.

“Her little girl’s asleep on your bed. She called me before you got here, asked if Penny could stay the night. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

He could sleep on the couch no problem. “Having her stay over?”

“No,” she said, scribbled on her puzzle, did not elaborate for a long minute. Finally she looked up at him. “Did you ever wonder why she named her daughter  _ Penelope?” _

In truth he hadn’t. It was a pretty name but he didn’t put much stock in names beyond aesthetics. He shook his head.

“I thought not. Keep it in mind, won’t you? I’m going to bed. Sleep well, honey.”

“You too, Dorie.”

***

Alessio did not mind sleeping on the couch, but that  _ did _ mean he woke up whenever anyone went into the kitchen. The sound of the fridge opening woke him at around five, but he kept his eyes closed, hoped Mel would go back to bed soon, wanted to get a few more hours of sleep before work. He’d almost succeeded when he felt a gentle tapping on his shoulder and his eyes snapped open.

Penny stood by the couch still in the t-shirt and shorts she’d worn the day before, her hair such a wild tangle around her face that he felt a pang of sympathy for Phoebe, who would have to comb it out later. “I can’t reach the juice,” she said in a stage-whisper.

He smiled, rubbed his eyes. “I’ll get it for you.”

She took his hand the minute he stood up, a fierce grip that reminded him so much of Phoebe. “It’s over here,” she said, pulling him to the kitchen, and he couldn’t think of a nice way to say he already knew that because he lived here so he let her take charge. He grabbed a plastic cup from the cupboard and the juice from the top shelf in the fridge, poured half a cup and handed it to Penny. She took a sip and looked up at him. “Your hair is messy.”

He laughed, put the juice back, leaned against the counter. “Yours too.”

“I know that,” she said, emptied her cup, set it on the table. “It’s morning now.”

It was still dark out but time was made up anyway, so if the qualification for morning was ‘awake and drank juice,’ that was as good as anything else. “It’s morning,” he agreed.

“Does that mean the kitties will be asleep?”

“You know, it’s still dark, so they might still be up. Do you want to go see?”

Her eyes were saucers, and they were such a dark brown that in the low light they blended with the pupils. “Can we?”

“Sure we can. We’ll just have to be quiet so we don’t scare them.”

“I can be quiet,” she said in that stage-whisper. She took his hand again but followed his lead downstairs, out the back door. 

It was the kind of cool that always preceded a hot day, with a breeze going and the grass wet with dew, and Alessio only briefly spared a thought for the integrity of his nice jeans before settling on the ground beside the busted truck where he’d have a good view of the cats’ hiding place. Penny immediately sat on his lap and he smiled indulgently.

True to her word, she sat stock-still and didn’t make a peep for twenty minutes, until a black kitten padded out from under the shop, followed by three tabbies and a calico. “Oh,” Penny whispered. “Less! Less! Kittens!”

He didn’t think he’d ever heard her say his name before and wasn’t surprised she couldn’t quite manage the slur of vowels that was  _ Alessio, _ but he wouldn’t pretend he wasn’t a little overwhelmed to hear her refer to him at all. He would never try to ingratiate himself with a child just because he was in love with her mother, but he liked Penny as herself. “I see them,” he whispered back. “Hold out your hand and see if they want to come over. Like this.” He reached towards the kittens and clicked his tongue and Penny immediately imitated him.

The stray cats were shy but kittens hadn’t learned to be afraid of people yet, so they made sounds that were more like beeps than proper meows and trotted over on tiny round feet. Penny vibrated with excitement and gasped when the calico kitten bumped her palm with its nose. “Be gentle,” he told her, but she was already being careful, using just the tips of her fingers to stroke the kitten’s head. The kitten closed its eyes, relaxed. “She likes you.”

“Can I name her?”

“Sure.”

“Pancake,” she said, still petting the kitten. He had no idea what about the kitten reminded her of pancakes but thought it would be rude to say so. “Now you.”

“Now me?”

“Name one!”

“Okay, okay, um…” He watched the black kitten get closer to his hand and when it was close enough to touch, it dropped down and rolled over so he could pet its belly. He already knew this would be a good memory and tried to think of the last really good memory he had. “Raspberry.”

“I don’t like that,” she said, not to mean but to be honest, so he smiled and kissed the top of her head.

Penny played with the kittens for a few more minutes before a tabby cat, probably the mother, appeared and meowed for the kittens, who went running back to her. They watched them disappear under the shop and Penny looked crestfallen.

“Hey,” he said, to cheer her up. “We can come back, if you want.”

She did perk up a little. “Every day?”

“You’ll have to ask your mama about that, but I’m fine with it if she is.”

For a moment she didn’t say anything but then she turned around so she could look up at him. “We saw kittens, Less.”

“We sure did,” he said with a laugh. “We sure did.”

***

He made pancakes for breakfast because Penny got him thinking about them, and Dorie, once she was awake, showed him how to pour the batter into a cookie cutter so they’d come out in shapes. They didn’t have a cat shape but they did have a heart, and after much begging Alessio let Penny stand on a chair so she could help him flip them. She thanked him every time. If he ever had a daughter, he hoped it would be like this with her too.

While Dorie took care to untangle Penny’s hair, Alessio jumped in the shower and changed clothes quickly so he could get her home before he had to start working. When he came out, he was surprised to see Penny in different clothes. “Did she get syrup on them?”

“No,” said Dorie. “Well, yes, but I had clothes here for the grandkids anyway. Now you can take her right to Ida’s so Phoebe can get to work without worrying about her.”

That was a nice idea, actually. If Phoebe agreed to letting Penny stay the night sometimes to cat-watch, he should consider getting some clothes for her so he could return her in presentable condition and prove he was a trustworthy babysitter. “Ready to go?” he asked Penny, who nodded.

Once they were outside, she immediately took his hand again and kept on holding it all the way to Ida’s. “It’s hot,” she said when they were most of the way there.

“It’s hot,” he agreed.

“Why’s it hot?”

“The sun makes it hot.”

“Why?”

“That’s just how the sun works.”

“But why?”

Oh, this part of talking to children he did not miss. It wasn’t annoying at all but in every long chain of ‘why? Why? Why?’ there came a point where he ran out of answers and he felt bad for being unable to help. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a complicated process. There are a lot of chemicals involved.”

“I don’t like it,” she said, studying the sidewalk so she could skip around the cracks.

He smiled. “It likes you. That’s why it’s warm, it’s like a hug from the sun.”

“No thank you,” she said. “I don’t want it.”

That was fair enough. They were outside Ida’s, so she dropped his hand and ran inside without looking back. When he heard Ida say “hi, Penny!” he turned towards Phoebe’s and kept going. Had she been lonely all night, or glad for the rest? He hadn’t had enough to drink that it made him sick this morning but maybe she’d kept going, wanted to sleep off a headache.

He knocked very politely on her door and heard her swear, heard the thump of something falling over and the creak of hinges before she yanked the door open. Her hair was wild around her face and she only wore a short robe, her face red. “Sorry,” he said, blushing. “Sorry if I’m interrupting something…”

“No. What? No one’s here, I just forgot to wash my scrubs… they’re in the dryer. Come in. Where’s Penny?”

He stepped inside and closed the door, and he couldn’t say why he was so relieved that Phoebe was alone. Well, he  _ could, _ but he’d rather not. He’d rather know she was having fun than sitting up lonely but it gave him a slightly sick feeling anyway. “Dorie gave her a change of clothes so I brought her to Ida’s. One less thing for you to do this morning.”

“Oh. Thank you.” She ran a hand through her hair. “How was she?”

“Demanding,” he said, and she laughed. “Woke me up early but it was fine. We went out to look for the cats, played with the kittens that showed up, and then we made pancakes. She’s a sweet kid.”

Phoebe got a slightly strange look on her face. “I’m glad you two had fun. I’m glad you get along.”

“Of course we get along,” he said. “She’s just like you.”

***

Penny stayed the night once a week from then on out. She always took Alessio’s bed so he always slept on the couch, and they always made pancakes together. She also always woke him up early to cat-watch. After another two or three trips out he started preparing chicken, and would bring it out in a little bag so Penny could feed them from her hand. Every time their tiny teeth grazed her fingers she squealed.

After a while the mother cat, who they called Bob after Mel’s preferred nickname of “big ol’ bastard,” got used to them and didn’t care if they played with the kittens. Penny was always gentle, always excited, and always a little devastated when they inevitably left and she inevitably had to go home.

On those mornings, after he dropped her off at Ida’s, he’d stop by Phoebe’s to keep her company while she got ready for work so he could tell her everything that happened that night. She seemed to really like hearing it, and he liked telling her. Penny was quickly becoming a joy that both of them could share.

One week, though, Penny was spending the night at Hector’s, and neither Phoebe nor Alessio knew what to do. “Guess  _ we _ should have a sleepover,” she said the night before, and she was clearly joking but he felt his face get hot anyway. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep spooning to a minimum. You can come over, though, if you want. Or– I still haven’t seen your place.”

“It’s not much,” he said. “Little bedroom, shared everything else. It’s just above the shop so it always smells like metal.”

“We only ever had a little room on the ship,” she reminded him. “And it smelled like metal too. I won’t, y’know,  _ intrude _ if you don’t want me to–”

“No! No, it’s not… I don’t want to disappoint you.”

She smiled in that quirking, teasing way she had. “I’ve never been disappointed after a night with you.” That did not make him relax. There was very little of her that reminded him of the girl who got drunk by herself and called him over because she had to know if she could care about him without an AI in her head, and there was very little of the girl who was afraid to take her clothes off for fear he’d be disgusted by her scars. And to be fair, there was very little of him left that had allowed her to be star-struck over him, that derailed the morning afterglow to be vain about his messy hair. She was no longer M and he was no longer Thirty. So where did that leave them?

“You can come over,” he heard himself say, and she smiled wider.

He deep-cleaned his room before she got there. He wasn’t a messy person, had never been a messy person, but he was extra careful sweeping the floor and making the bed so that he could fool her into thinking he had his life together. Just when he was finishing up, a small rock hit his window, and then a second. He opened the window and stuck his head out, saw Phoebe staring up at him with another rock in her hand and a backpack over her shoulder. “Delivery!” she hollered up. “Delivery for Alessio the mechanic!”

He grinned, remembering. “Where do I sign?”

This time she didn’t tap her mouth in an unspoken desire for a kiss, just grinned back. “Let me in.”

“Door’s unlocked, come on up.”

He heard her take the stairs two at a time and when she walked in, she’d lost the rock. “Nice place,” she said, looking around. “Is anything in here yours?”

It was mostly Dorie’s, to be fair. “The clothes,” he said. “Some of the books.”

“Which  _ some?” _ There was a bookshelf by the door and before he could say that everything on top was his, she picked one up. “Hey, I gave you this. Our first Christmas together.”

That had been a nice night. He’d gotten her flowers from his garden, and that night– and twice the next morning– had been the first time they’d slept together. “I’m sure you don’t have the flowers I gave you.”

“I can’t believe you kept it.”

“Why wouldn’t I keep it?” He couldn’t see any of those constellations way out here but he liked the stories about them. More than anything he liked that Phoebe had cared enough to get him something that mattered to her in a deep, real way.

“I’m bad with gifts, I guess.”

“Well, I love it. I loved it then and I love it now.”

She set the book down and turned to him. “I brought a deck of cards if you want to go really wild.  _ And _ a bag of M&Ms, because I couldn’t find more than three quarters.”

“To bet with, or to eat?”

“Both,” she said. “If I’m losing really badly–”

_ “If?” _

“I can just reach over and eat your chip-equivalent. So we’re even.”

“You could also,” he said with a smile, “try to play blackjack correctly.”

“I’ve never done anything correctly in my entire life,” she said, pulled a bag of candy and a deck of cards out of her backpack and dropped it on the floor. “I’m absolutely not starting now.”

He destroyed her in blackjack, as usual, but they switched to Go Fish and she got him there. After that was a very short-lived game of slapjack, because he felt way too guilty about hitting her to keep going. “It’s just my hand,” she said. “It’s the point of the game.” But he couldn’t do it anyway.

All their games took forever because they were talking while they played, and Phoebe talked with her hands so when she got into a story, she set her cards down. Alessio didn’t mind. He liked hearing her talk, and he wasn’t extremely invested in winning anything. It was dark by the time he bowed out of slapjack, and Dorie and Mel had gone to bed. “This is really nice,” she said, setting aside the cards and moving closer so she could eat his chocolate. “It’s been a while since I got to just… hang out.”

“Me too,” he said.

“You’re a good person to just hang out with. Very low pressure.”

“I try.”

“You succeed. At everything you do, actually. Like, you do your hair like that because you want people to think you’re attractive, right? Slam dunk.”

He swallowed hard, willed himself not to blush. “Thank you.”

“I’m not trying to make it weird, just… thought you should know.”

“Thank you,” he said again. “And, um… you too. I don’t know how much you  _ try _ but you– you’re very beautiful.”

She snorted but looked flattered anyway. “If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“I shouldn’t say this sober,” she said, “or probably at all, but man, why’d you have to remind me of that first Christmas?”

“What?”  _ She _ found the book,  _ she _ reminded  _ him _ of it. “I told you I like the book.”

“I don’t mean the book, I mean the whole long night after that.”

“Oh,” he said, and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s a nice thing to remember. It was fun, we were in love… New experiences with people you care about are always a good thing.”

“Fun is kind of an underwhelming way to put it, but sure. It was fun.”

She paused and then moved a little bit closer, close enough for him to put his arm around her if he wanted. “Do you ever think about it?” she asked softly. “That night, or any of the nights after…”

Nothing in that question suggested she had any interest in reminiscing about their actual  _ relationship, _ the days as well as the nights, and that was certainly telling. He might find the time to be a bit heartbroken about it later but right now she was very close to him and he could smell her sweet shampoo and yes, he did remember those long nights. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.” She’d always been so uncomfortable with the self-inflicted scar on her hipbone but all he could ever focus on was the pattern of freckles around it; he probably still knew them by heart.

“I know there’s nothing between us,” she said, and his heart sank. “I know it was a long time ago. But, damn…”

“That was–” He had to clear his throat. “That was M and Thirty.”

“You think it was Thirty I talked into railing me on the rec room couch?” His cheeks were  _ scalding. _ “No way. That was my Flyboy.”

“That’s all over now,” he said, and then suddenly they were kissing.

It wasn’t really  _ sudden, _ not in the way lightning is sudden, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what happened. Was she propositioning him, and tugged him down by his shirt? Was he overwhelmed by those particular memories and he reached for her? Were they still in sync and met partway?

He didn’t know, he wouldn’t ever know and for a beautiful moment he didn’t  _ care _ because her hands were clutching his shoulders and  _ his _ hands were in her hair, and she tasted like chocolate and he couldn’t keep from groaning. They overbalanced and she ended up on her back with him on top of her and the cards went flying and it was just like when they first started dating and they had no idea how to hold back– his hand skated just under her shirt–

A door slammed outside and they jolted apart like they’d just gotten caught. She tugged her shirt back down and he ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry,” he said, because that’s what he did.

“Two to tango,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, but she looked confused. “That was…”

“Yeah.”

“We can’t– I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have–”

“No, I was–”

“We should sleep,” she said, getting out of bed. “I’ll take the couch.”

“No–”

“I’m not kicking you out of your own bed. Uh, goodnight, Lessi.” She snatched up her backpack and slipped out of the room. When the door closed behind her, he dropped his head in his hands.

***

It took him a long time to fall asleep after she left. He couldn’t stop thinking about how good it felt to kiss her after so long, how warm she was in his hands, how  _ familiar _ it was. It had been almost six years since he’d kissed her last– they’d been apart three times as long as they were together– but that didn’t change anything. If he didn’t kiss her again for thirty years, would it feel the same?

He wanted to go out there, apologize or kiss her again or just talk things through, but in the end he was a coward, because he didn’t want to hear her say it was nothing; he couldn’t bear to hear her say  _ mistake. _ So he stayed where he was and fell into an uncomfortable sort of rest.

In the morning, though, the first thing he did was walk out into the living room, but the couch was empty. “She had to go to work,” said Dorie, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a smile. “She looked tired. Congratulations.”

His cheeks burned and he couldn’t quite smile back. “It’s not what you think.”

“I was young once too, honey.”

“She slept on the couch,” he said. “I don’t think she’ll want to see me again.” Especially because she didn’t have work for two more hours, which meant she made an excuse to leave before he woke up. He didn’t like talking about his problems but Dorie had a good heart and wanted this to work probably as much as he did, and he had no idea what else to do. He sat across from her and poured out the whole sorry story, from the first time he saw her smile and wanted to do anything he could to make her smile again, to her leaving without saying goodbye, to her kiss last night and the implication that she wanted things from him that were not necessarily romantic but were definitely related.

Dorie was quiet when he finished, which he appreciated; rushing to comfort was not going to help, so he wanted her thoughtful contemplation. “It’s a mess,” she said finally, and he almost laughed aloud at the understatement. “You really think she doesn’t care about you anymore?”

“She doesn’t seem to.”

“Or she’s guarded,” she said, “because she doesn’t know how  _ you _ feel.”

That didn’t strike him much like Phoebe, who had always loved regardless of reciprocation. Hell, the first time she said  _ I love you _ and it surprised him– he was used to his feelings being one-sided– she immediately followed it up by saying it was okay if he didn’t feel the same, just that she wanted to be honest. Maybe loss had changed that, or Penny, or just getting older.

“If I tell her how I feel,” he said, “and she doesn’t… feel the same, I just ruined our friendship. I’d rather be her friend than not see her, and I’d hate to stop seeing Penny…”

“Or,” she said, “it’ll put things on the mend. You’re lucky Mel isn’t here to browbeat again.”

“I just…” He sighed. “I don’t know what I’d do if it goes wrong.”

“Look at it this way,” said Dorie. “It won’t go wrong.”

***

Dorie was probably right– she was usually right– but that didn’t make it easier for Alessio to do anything about it. Penny still came over every week, but Phoebe picked her up in the morning, so there was no time for him to linger in Phoebe’s house while she got ready. He still went to Ida’s shop to poke around but when Phoebe picked Penny up after work, she never said much more than hello.

“Auntie says you’re being an idiot,” said Ida, a few weeks after the kiss. It was mid-autumn and the nights were crisp; it was actually a relief to step outside after all day in the stifling garage.

“I assume you mean Mel,” he said. “I’d be in dire straits if Dorie started insulting me like that.”

“Point’s the same. I’ve known you goin’ on a year now so I earned the right to shame you about this. You know that everyone in town knows you’re in love with her, except her?”

He reddened. He didn’t think he was particularly obvious about it, but either he was easier to read than he thought or Dorie was a tremendous gossip. “She doesn’t want to see me.”

“No, she’s  _ afraid _ to see you. That ain’t the same thing.”

“Afraid is worse!”

“Auntie was right,” said Ida, shaking her head. “She’s not afraid of  _ you, _ she’s afraid she’s messing up. Same thing  _ you’re _ afraid of. Bring her flowers, tell her you’re sorry, and what happens will happen.”

“I don’t know…”

“Well, decide quick so I can close up.”

He knew he should think it over, decide exactly what he was going to say and how he was going to say it, but he was worried she’d slip out of his grasp again like before. And that wasn’t her fault, really, she probably didn’t have much of a chance to say goodbye and he understood why she was reluctant to, but… everything happened so  _ fast _ . When Lambda went haywire on that last mission, she almost killed Nevada to protect West. That night she was court-martialed, that night Lambda was forcibly removed, and by the next morning she was gone.

And no, they weren’t in battle anymore, she didn’t have an AI or the Director standing over her shoulder, but he didn’t know how to shake that gut-punch feeling of the morning after, when he didn’t realize exactly how much he needed her until she was gone.

“Let me get something from the back,” he said, and she smiled.

In the back, what Ida’s shop called  _ exotics, _ he did his best to recreate that first bouquet he brought her for Christmas. He couldn’t find everything, ended up with mostly tulips– fitting for a girl with Dutch heritage– but it was presentable. Attractive, even. “I don’t have my wallet,” he said when he went back up to the front.

“Tell you what,” said Ida. “If these flowers do their job, I don’t owe you a wedding present.”

He found it in himself to smile, and tried not to run all the way to Phoebe’s.

***

He was shaking when he knocked on Phoebe’s door but he was determined not to run. He didn’t even throw up on her stoop when she opened the door, but it was a near thing. She was dressed for the warmth in leggings and a sweatshirt too big for her, the sleeves slipping down over her hands; she’d always worn clothes that were too baggy but he remembered suddenly how it felt to see her in one of his shirts.

“For you,” he said, holding out the flowers. She looked stunned and he wanted to say something intelligent or profound but most of his brain power was devoted to not passing out so that would have to wait. “Can we… talk?”

“I…” She did take the flowers, though. “Okay.”

He followed her inside and watched her look for a vase, fail to find one, stick the flowers in a big mug instead. The TV was on quietly but there was no other light or sound, so Penny must have been asleep. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “But I… I don’t want us to avoid each other forever.”

“Didn’t know what else to do,” she said, taking a seat at the kitchen table and waiting for him to sit across from her. “I didn’t mean to make things weird. You’re such a good friend, I don’t want to ruin that by getting awkward and, like… sexually charged.”

“I do,” he said, before he could lose his nerve. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

“That’s a change.”

“Whenever you asked me about the last girl I was with…” He huffed out a breath and ran his hand through his hair. “It was you. I haven’t been with anyone since you left.”

Her eyes were wide and her mouth was slightly open. “Almost six years…?”

“I was crazy about you,” he said. “I know I’m not… good about saying it. I’m not good at much and you make it hard to think. But I– I was head over heels for you. Something like that doesn’t– doesn’t go away on its own. I tried to move on, I really did, I tried to forget… I couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s because we never got closure, that we couldn’t choose to break up, but I think it’s just…”

He sighed again. “I don’t think I believe in  _ the one. _ I think loving easily and often is a good trait. But you come the closest. I love you, Phoebe. I think everyone knows except you and that’s not– that’s not fair. I’ve loved you a long time, I love your strength, I love your metal arm, I love that you can’t play cards and I love your daughter and I love that you don’t know how to find clothes that fit–” there she choked out a laugh, “and I love that I can make you smile.”

“You never used to talk like this,” she said.

“I think I’m about to have a heart attack,” he admitted. “But I didn’t get to say it before, and I lost you very… unexpectedly. I don’t think my luck is  _ that _ bad but I can’t stand thinking something might happen before I tell you again.”

For a long while she didn’t say anything, just stared at the table with furrowed brows, and he was sick with anxiety. Would she yell at him? Laugh at him, kick him out? “Do you know why I named her Penelope?” she asked finally.

“N-no.”

“When I was pregnant I was  _ so unhappy. _ I was lonely and guilt-ridden and helpless, I had no prospects and then no  _ arm, _ I missed all my friends so badly… I probably would’ve drank myself to death if I didn’t find out I was pregnant. Penny gave me something worth living for, and she reminded me I had to have hope.” She flicked her eyes up at him quick, just a flash of gold that nevertheless left him breathless. “You gave me  _ The Odyssey _ for my birthday, do you remember?”

He shook his head; he had no ear for poetry and no memory for mythology, so he rarely remembered the things Phoebe told him about it even when he tried.

“Odysseus’s wife is Penelope, and her whole thing… She waited. She waited for him to come back.”

Oh.  _ Oh. _ “Penny’s dad…”

“Sitting in my kitchen,” she said, and he rested his head in his hands to give him time to process that. Phoebe’s Penny, Penny with no freckles and deep brown eyes, Penny was just like her mom and hadn’t inherited anxiety or introversion or the need to be a people-pleaser, so it never occurred to him to think…

“She’s  _ mine?” _ he asked.

“Ours, but… yeah. You were the– the last one for me too.”

His breath caught in his throat and it was probably a good thing that she felt like that but maybe it was all in the past. “I had a baby,” he said, still shocked. He never got to see her learn to walk or talk or play patty-cake, never saw her as a wrinkly newborn, never got to sit up at night with her asleep on his chest. The guilt was  _ overwhelming _ and while there was no way he could have  _ known, _ could have even  _ suspected _ since Phoebe was on birth control at the time, he’d still missed out on a lot of Penny’s life. “I missed so much.”

“Look at it this way,” said Phoebe, cheeks red. “You can be around for the next one.”

Oh, oh, he couldn’t handle that, couldn’t stand hearing her offer something like that so casually. “You never said it back,” he said quietly. “Not really.”

“I love you,” she said, and he could finally breathe again. “I’ve loved you for years. Y’know, I tried to make Penny the best of us. I tried to teach her West’s curiosity and Mitch’s compassion and Miss’s, just…  _ fortitude. _ But I tried to give her your goodness, Lessi. I tried to teach her to be singularly loving and generous and thoughtful. So then even if I never saw you again, she’d still have some of her daddy’s memories to carry around.”

“What did you teach her from you? From yourself?”

“Nothing, I hope. I wanted her to have the best of us and the best thing about me is that I don’t die even when I should.”

“Hey, whoa…”

She shrugged. “You can lecture me in the morning.”

“In the– in the morning?”

“I love you,” she reminded him, as if he’d ever forget. “You love me, and we need to talk more, and I have no idea what we’ll be tomorrow. But I know exactly what we’ll be tonight.”

“And what’s that?”

“Together,” she said, and reached for his hand.

***

They woke up together before Penny did, at around four. Phoebe’s skin was hot against his own from where her back was pressed to his chest and he curled a hand around her scarred hipbone like if he hid it from view it wouldn’t bother her anymore.

“Good morning,” he whispered, and she stirred in his arms.

“‘S not morning,” she mumbled, but he just pulled her a little closer.

“There’s a little sunlight and we’re in bed. I’ll call that morning.”

“Picky, picky.” She rolled over in his arms so he could kiss her forehead, her nose, both her cheeks and finally her mouth. “I still don’t know what this is.”

“Fun?”

“You know that’s not what I mean. Did you have plans for the day?”

He had work that evening so he didn’t have too much time, and he told her that. “But you’ll have time before then, right?”

“Right. But  _ why?” _

She shrugged. “I was thinking about getting married.”

He definitely went into minor cardiac arrest hearing her say it, but he couldn’t resist a little tease. “Yeah? To who?”

She just laughed and moved in to kiss him deep.


End file.
